Submissions

ARTICLES

The Texas Law Review welcomes article and essay submissions from judges, academics, and practicing lawyers. We do not, however, accept submissions from current law students. The Texas Law Review accepts submissions via Scholastica only. We strongly prefer to receive electronic submissions that are uploaded as editable word documents (e.g., .doc or .docx rather than .pdf) with the word count included. We look forward to reviewing your submission.

ARTICLE LENGTH

The Texas Law Review is committed to publishing the best legal scholarship. In connection with this goal, the Texas Law Review, along with journals at Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Michigan, Stanford, U. Penn., Virginia, and Yale, endorses the statement reproduced below. We emphasize, however, that we do not impose a limit on the length of articles that we consider. Rather, we are committed to the nondiscriminatory review of articles—there is no absolute maximum or minimum length necessary for review or publication by the Texas Law Review. We believe quality legal scholarship can be found in both long and short articles, and our past practice bears this out. We endorse this statement as a step toward removing the perception that the Texas Law Review actively seeks out and publishes only long articles.

JOINT STATEMENT REGARDING ARTICLE LENGTH

In mid-December, the Harvard Law Review conducted a nationwide survey of law faculty regarding the state of legal scholarship. Nearly 800 professors completed the survey and submitted their feedback. Complete tabulations of the survey will soon be available on the web. Importantly, the survey documented one particularly unambiguous view shared by faculty and law review editors alike: the length of articles has become excessive. In fact, nearly 90% of faculty agreed that articles are too long. In addition, dozens of respondents submitted specific comments, identifying the dangers of this trend and calling for action. Survey respondents suggested that shorter articles would enhance the quality of legal scholarship, shorten and improve the editing process, and render articles more effective and easier to read.

The law reviews listed above are very grateful for the constructive feedback and wish to acknowledge a role in contributing to this unfortunate trend in legal scholarship. To the extent that the article selection or editing process encourages the submission and publication of lengthier articles, each of the law reviews listed above is committed to rethinking and modifying its policies as necessary. Indeed, some have already done so. The vast majority of law review articles can effectively convey their arguments within the range of 40–70 law review pages [which translates approximately to 20,000 to 35,000 words, including footnotes], and any impression that law reviews only publish or strongly prefer lengthier articles should be dispelled. Ultimately, individual law reviews will have to decide for themselves how best to resolve these concerns. Please know, however, that editors across the country are cognizant of the troubling trend toward longer articles and are actively exploring how to address it.

REVIEWS & ESSAYS

The Texas Law Review is committed to providing a forum for the publication of book reviews by academics, judges, and practicing lawyers.

Our general practice is to select books for review in February and March each year, and then solicit reviewers for each book. However, we also welcome review submissions. We strongly prefer reviews of legal books that will be published in the upcoming year so that the reviews are current. Although we do not impose a limit on the length of the reviews we consider, we prefer and typically publish reviews that are 10,000 words or less.

If you are interested in submitting a book review to the Texas Law Review, please contact bookreviews@texaslrev.com. We recommend that any submissions (complete drafts or abstracts) be sent via e-mail in the early spring because the next year’s volume is generally full by the beginning of the summer. We strongly prefer to receive electronic submissions that are uploaded as editable word documents (e.g., .doc or .docx rather than .pdf).

NOTES

Call for Student Note Submissions

The editorial board of the Texas Law Review is now accepting student Note submissions from non-members. All members of the University of Texas School of Law class of 2017 are invited to make one submission. TLR is excited to increase the diversity of topics analyzed in Volume 95 and to provide the opportunity for more Texas Law students to showcase their work.

A Note typically addresses a relatively narrow legal question with a single well-developed and well-documented argument. A Note should advance legal scholarship in a specific area by making or developing an argument that has not been made in other publications. This might include a discussion of conflicts or inconsistencies between courts or problems that legislatures and courts have not addressed. Although a Note might need to describe pertinent legal doctrine on a subject, the focus of the Note should be to make and analyze legal and policy arguments and not merely to summarize an area of the law.

Submissions must conform to the same requirements placed on TLR members. Failure to conform to these requirements will result in your note not being considered for publication. The detailed requirements are posted here, but broadly:

Authors must electronically submit their Note, an abstract not exceeding one page, an author information sheet, and a thorough preemption check summary by July 8, 2016. Submissions should be emailed to tlr.notesubmissions@gmail.com.

Notes must be at least 20 double-spaced pages in length.

Every assertion in the Note that requires support must be cited.

All citations must conform to Bluebook and Greenbook citation rules.

The Note must be written on a non-preempted topic. Authors must conduct thorough preemption checks before submitting their Note.

As a general matter, a Note should make an argument; it will not suffice for an author to merely summarize the state of the relevant law or rehash arguments made by others.

Texas Law Review reserves the right of first refusal for all Notes submitted, but we hope to notify all candidates by October 7, 2016 whether they were selected or not.

Submissions have two opportunities to be published. We hope to publish two non-member Notes in the print edition of Volume 95. Additionally, submissions will be considered for publication in See Also, TLR’s online companion.

TLR ONLINE

The Texas Law Review See Also is an exclusively online journal that publishes 1) responses to Texas Law Review articles, notes, or book reviews and 2) a handful of student notes from members of the Texas Law Review. Pieces published in See Also are available on HeinOnline, Westlaw, and at http://dev.texaslrev.com/category/seealso/.

Submission Process:

If you are interested in responding to an article or note in the Texas Law Review and would like to submit to Texas Law Review: See Also, please contact tlro@texaslrev.com.

The title and citation of the Texas Law Review article, book review, or student note the response will respond to.

A brief summary (less than one page) of the argument the response will make.